I'm looking for something that makes matrioska brains an inelegant solution - something that provides infinite computation in finite time (with a finite sized "answer", I suppose,preferably on a single electron), or something that's exponentially fast in time - years...

I think matrioska brains are a little unimaginative. is there no way to get an infinite amount of computation done in a finite amount of time? Is there any chance a single wave function can act on itself, and do...

Solar simply isn't a good solution for domestic power at any latitude where domestic heating is required in winter. Yes, we can insulate our homes better -- but that isn't enough if you live somewhere where ambient air temperatures average...

I don't have a list, but I wouldn't be too suprised to hear a lot more about ukip. The uk might even leave the european union, as polls increasingly support. Who wants to be associated with failure?...

@69 Charlie - are we actually seeing a drop in real terms wages? They may not be going up in the uk, but they're rising rapidly elsewhere, the net outflow of money to labour could be rising, it might even...

I think there's a reasonable chance of Chinese organised labour raising out living standards within then next 10 or 20 years - China's gdp per capita is now over 8000 dollars, only a little under 1/4 Britains, and it wouldn't...

The employment module has crashed again, and the mental health care module takes so long to load I've forgotten what I was going to do with it. Isn't this tying up your server resources? The 'live with your parents' module...

A thoughtless comparison with the uk would seem to indicate that more lives are lost to self defense weapons than are saved by them. Unless you think you can find a significance that can balance that (like self defense weapons...

You can finish the question somewhat though. You might consider the phrase "killing is wrong" to be naive (or not), but "killing someone whom you do not know for no gain to anyone anywhere is wrong" is starting to look...

@53 Seaton/Crane actually kill a galaxy of chlorans, but can't kill the planet of Fenachrone, someone else has to do it for them. @97 The Lensmen are something that has proven to not exist in the real world, the lensmen...

Comment Threads

"We don't have to invent everything for ourselves, we just need to learn how to use others inventions." - this doesn't stop there. Most of the tools were not invented for what they are used today. They get redesigned, reshaped and end up being used for completely different purposes. Just look at the PVC. Some two centuries ago, when it was discovered, it wasn't intended to become one of the most widely produced plastic. - Shimon Haber...

@ 470 imho agreed about perceiving control systems and ability to game the system efficiently. Not so sure about cooperation as we are already sensitive to tit-tat with initial tat economics. @ 471 using others inventions for mass market profits requires/presupposes constancy in the environment which may be social rather than base environmental. We don't see much market for 8track tape adapters or old style printer cables ...so tooling up to make them might not be economically advantageous. On the other hand, a suitable "killer app" in social context could well sustain a growth industry in designer accessories for that...

I wonder ... I've met a couple of other people who couldn't/wouldn't eat same, mainly because of the really crap cooking methods they had endured. No, Greg. There's a well-known category of supertasters who are sensitive to certain plant alkaloids -- notably found in Brassica oleracea and grapefruit juice, coffee, green tea, and various other foods. In my case, grapefruit juice tastes unspeakably bitter, and just the smell of cauliflower makes me nauseous: something in it reminds me of diarrhoea....

I'm late to this party, but regarding your list set of comments, I'm reminded of comments in Joel Mokyr's The Enlightened Economy, in which he says that even if only a minority of people are actually reading about improved efficiency and techniques, efficiency as a whole may move forward through the spread of information from books to interpersonal contacts. Mokyr uses the example of farming: In the long run, it may not have mattered all that much that only a small minority of farmers took the trouble to read these books. Knowledge spread and filtered down through networks of personal...